Non-overlapping geometric shadow map

Abstract

Real-time rendering of pixel-accurate hard shadows in 3D scenes is still a challenging problem for shadow generation techniques. In this paper, we present the concept of non-overlapping geometric shadow map (NOGSM), which enables the construction of high-quality hard shadows from static lights for any point in the scene. The NOGSM is created in a preprocessing phase, in which the scene’s geometry is looked at from the light’s point of view. All hidden surfaces are removed through total elimination of hidden polygons plus clipping of the partially hidden polygons. The resulting list of non-overlapping projected polygons is then stored in a multi-grid data structure. Our solution generates shadows with far better quality than standard shadow mapping techniques, while maintaining real time performance, and using a smaller memory footprint than compression techniques.